Oh brother where art thou?

Sent in response to yet another letter from Lloyd Hoffman, our perennial village idiot. Beyond an acute addiction to alliteration (the whole thing hangs off the phrase “prattling preachery”), I think I have writer’s OCD — I tweaked this for at least three days before finally submitting it. And I’m still not really happy with it…

– Monsieur Jacques d’Nalgar, November 21, 2015

Dear editor,

Oh my little brother, where art thou NOW?! Week after week your letters, pregnant with petulant, prattling preachery raging against the black man in the White House, parade your naked paranoia and your ponderous morality for all to see. Who anointed you and your amen corner arbiters of who is — and who is not — Christian?

Confessing camaraderie with radio rabble-rouser Mark Levin reveals much. Like you, he hates Obama, hates Muslims, and dearly loves Israel, more even than he loves Dear Homeland. Levin, by the way, thinks your Grandiose Old Party is “thoroughly corrupt, craven, unprincipled, and unconstitutional.” Imagine what he thinks of my godless Democrats!

You and little Mark Levin. What a team! Despite your wild accusations, Israel has never had a better friend than this president. Favorite spy Jonathan Pollard was just released. Security assistance to Israel has increased every year since Obama took office and over the past three years, he’s given them nearly $10 billion just in military aid.

That’s about 20 percent higher than the remaining six dozen recipients of U.S. Foreign Military Financing combined. And sadly, all while ignoring Israel’s plunge into the madness of fascism and apartheid. All while Palestinians are told they must never resist, but be forever meek as sheep bound for the abattoir…

Your insinuations that Obama is a clandestine Muslim would be laughable were they not contemptible. So what if he was? Islam is not new to America. The first Muslims came here in chains, as African slaves, and they’ve been coming ever since. But now, somehow, fearing and loathing these fellow Americans is an acceptable and righteous thing. Even before the horrors of Paris, your good-godly Republican candidates and governors were shamelessly peddling Islamophobia. Since Paris, that clown car has only gotten louder and sillier. I can only imagine that you and your buddy Mark Levin are giddy at the prospect of shuttered mosques and Muslim ankle bracelets.

Despair comes easily in this gathering gloom, as we witness the rise of regressives in America. But perhaps this season of big flags and bigots masquerading as Christian patriots is the last hurrah of a frightened generation that will soon shuffle off this mortal coil. Perhaps our long winter of malfeasance and mendacity, which neither kept us safe nor trickled prosperity, has finally run its bloody course. Never forget that WE THE PEOPLE managed to elect — twice! — an unlikely brown-skinned Hawaiian community organizer with a Kenyan father and a middle name of “Hussein.”

Obama said it best. “My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.” Pray that we soon emerge from this present darkness, from this senseless, shameful surrender to our worst impulses. Pray that we once again find that abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation, and in the possibilities of all of us who live, together, on this amazing, beautiful world.

6 comments

Send it. You are correct, it is far too literate for the local audience, most will not read past the first 3 syllable word. Much the same as when I quit reading after the first bible verse in sermons from the thumpers and snake handlers. But it should be said, and you might also remind bubba that we won the ColdWar without firing a shot; that Soviet communism fell of its own weight; that Sikes-Picot created the madness that is the Middle East through the meddling of foreign powers, and today peoples and nations seem more willing to resort to bombs and bullets to create discord, than to words and helping hands that lead to peace among humans rather than shooting war between armed camps with their own version of some “book.”

Mike Nunn on November 22, 2015 at 2:30 am

As always, you are the master of words and common sense. I love it but the only question is whether or not the ignorant masses out there in Bubbaland will understand it. I think that you should send it for it needs to be printed.

William Wiedmann on November 23, 2015 at 11:55 am

Well said. Is the craziness of Lloyd Hoffman typical of all America or are we just the lucky recipients of such nonsense here in Arkansas? The religious and military extremists never learn or open their minds to other ways of thinking.

Well, it was in today’s paper. We’ll see who, if anyone, bites… Thanks, to my “amen corner” for all the kind comments.

Alana Baker on November 30, 2015 at 10:49 am

Very well said. However, along with Stephen and Mike, I have to wonder if the slack-jawed masses around here will understand. As for Lloyd, he is obviously one of those characters who loves to hear himself talk about matters of which he knows very little.

Willful stupidity confounds me. That’s why I had to ask you if L.H. is a made up character.

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